Veil (98 page)

She could still feel Jin’s heartbeat, and it
slowed little by little.

And now we give thanks, give thanks for each
other.

She did thank him. She thanked him for being
her Jin and for loving her. She was his and he was hers. Jin was
all she ever needed, and once he left all she did was wait for the
moment when she would go home to him.

His heart slowed beneath her hand, and she
felt herself happily going with him. She wanted to go with him.

Just as he did so many years before, Roy wept
as the heart beneath his palm weakened while the lungs slowed. His
eyes spilled heavy, love-and-grief ribboned tears, as he gazed
adoringly at the tired face in front of him. He rose to whisper in
his friend’s ear, careful not to let his hand leave her chest.

“Go with him, lady Suren. He misses you. He
loves you so much. He’s there waiting for you. I love you, lady
Suren. I hate to see you leave, but it’s time for you to go and be
with your Jin.” Roy slowly lowered back down in the chair, still
careful not to let his hand leave Suren’s chest.

She didn’t know what was going to happen
next. She was done with that world. She couldn’t worry about what
would happen to the world they made, the world her and Jin were
leaving behind together. They lived their lives, and it was time to
move on. They would leave that world together, right then.

That was always how it was supposed to be and
there was nothing left to do.

Nina told Suren she was right.

At peace forever, for it is done.

She stared at Jin’s face while the tears
slowed to a ghost of a trickle. She smiled next to Jin in the
hospital and next to Roy in her bedroom. She smiled at how Hunter
beautifully, poetically, and lovingly got the last word.

Suren stared at her Jin and let go along with
him. As the heartbeat below her hand faded, so did the one below
Roy’s.

In that last moment, Jin’s eyelids slowly
opened and his eyes were fixed upon hers. Suren didn’t have the
strength to gasp or smile from the utter bliss while the two sank
into each other’s gaze … sinking as their heartbeats faded and
faded and faded…

They faded until they completely sank away
into each other.

Nina’s voice grew faint as the last breaths
of air crossed the couple’s lips. Their breaths met and melded and
danced together, until they drifted beyond Nina’s final words.

Suren knew those words by heart, as perfectly
as her heart knew Jin’s love
.
Both were
stitched into her soul
.

Each lyric unraveled as Suren let go and went
home to her Jin.

Although her ears didn’t hear them, Suren’s
spirit echoed Nina’s words, so she took them home with her.

At peace forever, for we are one.

"what is life after veil?"

S
he had three more
days until she was officially Dominika Alexandrovna. Three more
days until her chosen name actually represented the life she picked
when she was six years old. Most youth didn’t pick their lives
until they were a teen Veiler but not Cheyenne. She knew at age
six, and her wait started. Only three days left. Cheyenne had three
days until she was an adult, was granted her chosen name, and could
have her vPort upgraded to the permanent and unrestricted model.
From the moment it was installed on her second birthday, she
experienced complications with her port, so upgrades were always
especially difficult for her to bear, and she dreaded them.

Unlike most children, the
nanoelectrode-infused silicone resin they coated her skull with
when she was two years old didn’t grow along with her body. Her
doctors could not explain or correct it. For some reason, the
silicone membrane, which connected to the vPort in the base of her
neck, didn’t expand and stretch with the growth of her skin and
bone structure, as it was designed to do. Along with the customary
five-year vPort upgrades, she also had to suffer through silicone
membrane upgrades as well. That meant every five years Cheyenne’s
entire scalp had to be detached. Doctors folded back the flesh in
order for the old membrane to be chipped off, so a new layer of
silicone resin could be lacquered onto her skull, after which her
scalp was reattached and had to heal again. Cheyenne had an
understandably greater reason than her peers to look forward to her
permanent vPort upgrade. In three days, thank Jin.

She was already kicking herself for agreeing
to stay late at work, as a favor to a coworker who was getting
married that day. The coworker informed Cheyenne she badly wanted
to experience her wedding inside the Veil at precisely the same
time of day as when the wedding originally took place. That way,
she said, she could feel the sunshine on her face while she
experienced her vows inside the Veil, just as the sun shined during
the wedding. Cheyenne couldn’t blame her for that. It was much like
when she snuck away to her private plot, so she should perform
every movement of dance inside her Veil as Dominika.

Besides, Cheyenne informed her coworker, she
met a boy, too. After her latest recital of Black Swan, a young man
was escorted backstage by her Ballet Mistress. He was a young
Russian boy named Vladimir Romanov. Vladimir presented her with not
one dozen but two-dozen roses and a diamond bracelet. Cheyenne told
her coworker that she simply knew Vladimir was the boy she was
destined to marry. And, not because she knew from the vLife
synopsis that Dominika Alexandrovna one day became Dominika
Romanov, but because she felt it in her heart, as soon as she saw
him—before she knew his name. Dominika knew as soon as she saw
Vladimir that she loved him, and Cheyenne felt it. So, she told her
coworker, she understood the request, and she would stay a little
later for her that day.

She stepped off the train and scurried to her
private little dance plot. She figured she had exactly enough time
to resume her Veil and enjoy her first date with Vladimir, right
after one more practice recital at the new performance venue. Every
time their show changed venues, her Ballet Mistress insisted on
three dress rehearsals, so that the group could get accustomed to
the subtle differences of the stage. Dominika was the only one in
the group who didn’t complain. She cherished every moment that
provided her with an opportunity to dance, even if merely a dress
rehearsal. It didn’t matter to her, because she was dancing.
Cheyenne equally lived for those moments.

Cheyenne rushed over to the faded yellow
line, plopped down with her bag next to her, and removed her shoes.
She took off her socks, adjusted the bandages on her feet, and put
on a fresh pair. With her mobile vHost strapped to her wrist and
cabled-in, Cheyenne took her position in the center of the plot,
pressed the button to resume her Veil, and closed her eyes.

Nothing happened. With her eyes still closed,
she pressed the button again. Still nothing happened. She opened
her eyes, examined her vHost, and verified everything was as it
should have been. She pushed the button again, and nothing
happened. Her vHost indicated that her Veil was in session and
streaming: the Veil was running. However, nothing was happening.
Cheyenne’s Witness wasn’t delivering the Veil to her, so she
quickly pushed the button to pause the stream.

She pushed another button on her vHost and a
small plug ejected from the right side of the device. She pulled on
the plug and a fiberoptic cable spooled out of her vHost. With the
plug in her fingers, she felt around on the vPort implanted in the
base of her neck until she located its diagnostic panel. Using her
fingernail, she slid open the panel door. Cheyenne plugged in the
diagnostic cable and felt it snap into place. The sharp click
echoed throughout her head.

After approximately twenty seconds, her vHost
beeped. According to the diagnostics, nothing was wrong with her
vHost or her vPort. Cheyenne should have been inside her Veil as
soon as she pressed the button the first time. She decided to give
it one more shot. She pushed the button on the host, but after a
few seconds she stopped the stream because once again, nothing
happened.

The following day, her doctor assured her the
issue was likely related to all the vPort complications that
Cheyenne experienced since birth. He suggested perhaps her skull
grew too large for the membrane, which meant the silicone couldn’t
map out her entire Witness. He added that maybe there was some
other kind of malfunction, which the diagnostics couldn’t detect.
It wasn’t unheard of but it was extremely rare. Although he never
came across a vPort malfunction in all his sixty years of practice,
he did Veil about them in vMed School, so he did consider himself
versed enough to deal with one. Fear not, he assured her. Because
she was so close to her eighteenth birthday and her final vPort
upgrade, he would perform the procedure a couple of days early, and
she should be good as new. She wouldn’t even gain any time at her
job, because the customary upgrade was figured into her position’s
daily time projection.

The upgrade of her vPort and silicone
membrane went exactly as the doctor expected, and the diagnostics
indicated everything was operating correctly and optimally.
Considering that, Dr. Webster Soulard simply could not account for
why Cheyenne’s Witness still failed to deliver her Veil. They
resorted to the old-school method of Veil, which didn’t use
streaming, but that didn’t work either. Dr. Soulard was at a
complete loss. The only thing he could do for Cheyenne was send the
data to Surveil and wait for them to report back.

Sure, he heard rumors of a couple people
around the world whose Witnesses permanently stopped delivering
Veils, but he knew those were old wives’ tales that were meant to
keep people from tampering with their ports. There was no such
thing as someone’s Veil no longer working. He consoled Cheyenne by
telling her they’d get to the bottom of it. The only consequence,
he regretted to inform her, was that the time cost of the tests
performed by Surveil and any subsequent procedures would be
compensated by demoting her to a position with a longer daily time
projection. Dr. Webster didn’t see any way around that.

At first, Cheyenne’s coworkers were most
sympathetic. Her Veil not working? They never heard of such a
nightmare. They couldn’t imagine the horror; they almost didn’t
want to imagine it. They wondered what in the name of Jin she would
do with her time. How would she keep herself busy? They would gasp
in disbelief as the gravity of Cheyenne’s condition sunk in. The
poor girl couldn’t live her life. What in Jin’s name would become
of her?

The answer was simple: nothing. Cheyenne
didn’t do anything. She had nothing to do except sit and wait.
There was nothing to keep her busy and no one to talk to. She
picked up more shifts at work, in the hopes that it would offset
her demotion. Although she was still on target to complete her Veil
and live out Dominika’s life, she didn’t want to risk it. Besides,
she had nothing better to do. She went from working her required
three and a half hours a day to working almost eight hours a
day.

That didn’t last long. It wasn’t that
Cheyenne couldn’t handle the work, and it wasn’t that they weren’t
making the hours available to her. It wasn’t those things at all.
The problem was, Cheyenne had nothing to talk about. When everyone
gathered around on breaks or during lunch and discussed what was
going on as they lived out their current Veil, Cheyenne had nothing
to say.

Nothing changed: Cheyenne’s Veil still wasn’t
working, and everyone already knew it, so there was nothing to tell
them. They already knew her doctor was waiting to hear back from
Surveil; they already told her how badly they felt for her; they
already talked about what she did with her time. With life on pause
inside her vPort, Cheyenne had nothing to talk about. She had
nothing. Nothing but time, which was going to waste. And she knew
what that meant…